001i will call the meeting to order this is the concord public schools school committee it is june 15th 2021. i want to welcome people back to a live meeting i will ask for the forbearance of any zoom visitors as we shake down this new hybrid that we're starting tonight i want to welcome our new member tracy morano tracy good evening thank you and we will note that we are being recorded we want to acknowledge uh minuteman media network thank you and because we have one member remote we will do the roll call please anderson president bluth president murano present midstate present radio president thank you very much we begin the first meeting post concord town meeting with the organization of the committee and i will ask for a motion that the i'll make a motion
002to recognize alexa anderson cortland booth tracy morano vladimir and cynthia rainey as members of the conference school committee thank you is there a second second discussion and uh roll call vote please and i will note that we have uh accepted our responsibilities for the uh tenure in front of us thank you very much it is now as the next order of business the election of officers and i will note that this evening when the concord carlisle school committee joins us when we have our carlisle members and commence with the the joint school committee meeting there will be no regional election of officers this evening and that's because the carlisle elections have not been held so that task will come before us sometime this summer and i'm sorry to say we don't have summer dates set
003at this point we do expect a meeting sometime between july 20 and july 30. so at this point it is my privilege to nominate cynthia rainey as the chair of the concord public schools school committee cynthia has a long history of public service with the school district and the town in general has served admirably as a vice chair this past year and having performed that duty she has the privilege now thank you of i hope accepting the role of the chair is there a second please second discussion those in favor please anders and i booth oh sorry i want a good for you cynthia miss that guy and uh cynthia rainey makes it unanimous thank you uh we will now have the ceremonial uh changing of the chairs this is a physical needed moving track
004here so the audience will indulge us for a moment thank you okay here we go all right we're almost there are you getting yeah oh my goodness yes although we certainly know who you are no but that was okay okay move complete now without looking at my computer i would like to entertain a motion for the vice chair and i'd like to nominate myself alexa anderson to be vice chair of the concord school committee i'll be pleased to second that thank you very much discussion alexa and her colleague fatima have been with us for the past year and we all know what the first year learning curve is like it's very steep and if you're willing to accept we want to thank you for stepping up to the road any other discussion roll call please
005anderson and congratulations thanks uh i'd like to entertain a motion for an appointment of aaron higgins as recording secretary so any discussion well she served us faithfully and we're pleased she continues to do so thank you yes thank you very much roll call please anderson act who's i marana rania congratulations erin she's on zoom so she hears you great thank you um next order of business is uh cps end of the year update close update i think i'm going to turn it over to jared fairly quickly our goal tonight is to verbally begin to give you information and we i'll let jared give you the timeline but unlike the region where we have to make decisions definitively by the end of june the local budget with concord has a little more flexibility to in terms
006of timelines so we just want to give you some idea of where we are fiscally and start to predict a little bit of how your end will look great well thank you um i was hoping this to be more of a conversation rather than a memo as doug hunter just said uh right now um we're tracking we're tracking well we have about just uh over 800 000 in unencumbered that doesn't mean that that's going to be expenses that are not spent i know a lot more a little bit more i i know where we are right now after the last payroll payroll 26. we have until july 15 to close i do not anticipate there to be a surplus obviously not a deficit the goal is to have all of our circuit breaker revolving account
007to be 100 fully funded um in addition to having uh potentially all of our prepaid tuitions uh which i've identified about 400 000 give or take right now that will be eligible to prepay for so we're allowed to prepay our first three months of tuitions uh collaboratives we are um allowed to pay the full year or month um so it is tracking uh really well a lot of the reasons for that is really due to the shutdown beginning of the year we saved a little bit in well some supplies that we brought over from last fiscal year utilities a little bit even though the schools were open they weren't being used as much such as the sewer that's gone down a little bit not much um in uh tuitions tuitions are a little bit less
008than what we budgeted um and again the the esser funds as well as the cares act so a couple weeks ago they did announce the uh the third round of the emergency release emergency emergency funds concord is getting 995 139 so i'm learning a little bit more about that that is something that hopefully we can carry for as long as possible i believe up to fy24 um so that will help us contingency in the future in addition uh we do plan to carry over the uh the original esser uh emergency relief amount of about 112 000 as well as the the emergency relief the two which was four hundred and forty three thousand nine hundred dollars uh i will know more once we close out once we start reclassifying things again the goal is to
009set this up for the the you know fy22 and fl 23 and a little bit in fy24 other than that food service food service right now we are projecting a deficit that is something that it's not going to be we carry over money so it's not going to be going into the red but we will have a shorter balance than we had when we started the goal is to at least try and get back to about four months worth of expenses you're allowed between you know up to about six months worth of expenses in there which is we average about sixty thousand dollars a month in expenses um so that's something we'd like to put back uh but we won't know until again probably later uh later probably after the last payroll into into july
010we tend to close out uh in the middle of august that's when i really start to know our numbers um but i'll have a preliminary closeout amount probably by that july meeting so again everything is tracking well um and i think we will be nicely set up for f422 this is the last meeting of the fiscal year so to extend our thanks to your entire team for the unusual management tasks that were necessary this year curious about the emergency relief monies were all the sums that you mentioned concord public schools specific or were any co-mingled with the town's accounts uh nope these are all concord public schools specific the town did give us part of their cares act money 126 825 dollars so we did use that the rest is all specifically concord public schools
011thank you so we'll have a motion later on but right now we don't have any action on that that report great more to come so our next uh now move to the action items we need to vote to surplus uh quite a few materials from the alcott school library um i'll entertain a motion that we can have any discussion uh i want you to motion that the conference school committee votes to surplus books at the alcott library so moved unless that was a motion and i'm seconding it i'm not sure no i was looking for something so emotionally yeah thank you i'll stay in it thank you oh are we discussing or am i yes discussing any discussion well i think it's an opportunity to uh thank our uh library specialists instructional specialists in the
012library and note that dr hunter this is probably part of their ongoing process of knowing what's in their inventory and what belongs in and what belongs out and why so we thank you for their work getting used or reused right that's goodness great uh roll call please anderson morano i instead i radia and our next action item is to accept the grade five class last kit class skip to alca and i don't know i move that the concord school committee uh vote to accept a gift to the alcott school from the fifth grade committee as outlined in principal krakow's memo dated june 8th 2021. dr hunter do you want to speak to that after a second second do dr hunter do you have uh sure oh it wasn't sure if you're ready um so it's
013very traditional that a fifth grade class would leave a gift to the building and so the fifth grade committee at alaca has proposed gifting a bookshelf to go into the outfit library display books around the theme of diversity equity and inclusion we're actively really working with the librarians and making sure that we're continuing to broaden our diverse repertoire and that kids are really all able to see themselves in the collections that we offer so the bookshelf would be a first piece of that and i think we're humbled to see their honor for the alcott and district leaders and staff who got us through covet i think is the intent and they're donating 10 new books around the dei theme i'll just read what it says here concord based social justice organization high five equality which
014was founded by an alcott family will also match the book donation so it'll be a total of 20. so it's a really lovely gift and right in line with all of our strategic planning initiatives and will certainly benefit the students huge thank you to the fifth grade class and to the other educators working with them and the families any other discussion and our next action item is to vote to pre-pay the special education tuition that we just just discussed so in in years past we sort of just had a discussion um and the committee voted to allow any surplus to be paid for for the for tuitions uh this year i sort of formalized it um and um it came up with this this motion right here like i said we've identified about 400 000
015right now that we it is not a requirement for the school committee to authorize it um but it's it's um it is sort of required for this discussion to take place in its being minutes so i figured you know why not just memorializing a vote and going forward i think it's good practice great so you mentioned a number of approximately 400 000 obviously you've got up to 800 000 yes but uh i do right now but that doesn't mean that's going to be available right now i think after we close some of the other gaps it will probably go to zero what we did is we literally went through every single tuition that we had and identified what we thought could be prepaid and that's how we came up with this amount um it won't
016be if there's there won't be much more than this and it might even be a little bit less and if there is a if there are surplus um there's really only uh there's not many places that we can we can put it so we would be going back to the town and we're just going to be free cash very good so just do you want to clarify because the motion doesn't actually have the number in it doesn't help them understand that sure so uh i did not put the number on in this really on purpose um so this just authorizes the pre the prepayment of fy22 tuitions you can add an approximate amount um but i i actually on purpose did not just because i just wanted you to authorize that we could do this
017are you ready for a motion uh i think we are okay i moved that the school committee authorized the prepayment of fiscal 2022 tuitions in accordance with mgl chapter 71 section 71d and mgl chapter 40 section 4e thank you second so i move that the if i may through the chair that the concord school committee entered into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to conduct strategy sessions concerning whether to hear a step three grievance filed by the conquer teachers association cta and returned to open session [Music] second roll call police anderson booth i marathon so it's 5 19 what would be um an estimated return approximately 25 minutes yeah so 5 45. okay very good we are going into room three which is right here found one you have a different
018zoom length to use yes thank you welcome i'd like to call to order the concrete carlisle regional school committee and have a roll call please anderson president who's present miranda president mr president randy president wilson present thank you i will start with public comments if you are from the public this is a new thing to navigate uh raise your hand through the participants tab though we have oh we can't see the participants tab yep so click the raise hand in the participants tab or turn on your video so that we can see you and uh when you are there please uh please give your name and your address um and you may speak for up to three minutes hi welcome carlin carl and reid 83 woodson thank you for doing this by zoom as well
019as in person it is difficult to see your faces and the audio needs to be a little closer to your microphones but i do appreciate the efforts thanks folks thanks welcome [Music] dewey do you have a public comment that was it was it i think that was it yes okay uh do we have any others court i can't see that participantless so i don't see it i'm looking back here and it's pretty clear i believe we are back okay i don't see any reinstatements no all right then let's move on to chairs and liaisons reports yes alexa um we the cochran c or the concord carlisle cpac had their monthly board meeting last thursday um they elected their new board um and i think they seated almost all open positions with a couple with maybe
020like one or two left vacant they are certainly looking for more volunteers if um anyone out there is uh interested and yeah that's that was really the big news thank you of course i think i speak for the entire school committee committees when i uh thank everybody involved for a very successful concord town meeting um thank you to dr hunter and mr stanton for cueing us up for their important part of that and thanks to all the town volunteers and officials that put it together indeed and then uh lori jarrett and i met with carlisle fincom last night um to discuss a bit more in depth um how we are utilizing the surplus and um so we can we'll talk more about that i think when we bring that up when we bring up that
021discussion but they're very involved to know about the process um and it was a productive conversation i think great thank you correspondence so i have a couple for uh concord then i received one on behalf of the regional school district uh a parent inquired about our school resource officers and we were able to clarify that their role is largely uh safety and climate oriented not law enforcement as might happen in other environments but not in a school and we heard from a citizen in her private capacity who's also an elected official to express thanks to many in the schools for a successful year but notably dr hunter who she referred to as a gem on quote unquote so we passed that on to you dr hunter then from the green team at the high school
022of course they wanted to not leave a carbon footprint so this was hand delivered to my door and it reads dear concord carlisle high school and school committee thank you so much for your support of the green team this year thanks to you we have a pollinator garden that is coming along really well exclamation point we really appreciate it exclamation point thanks again uh kyah heine uh haney excuse me uh and the green team and kaya is the class of 24. and i would only note in closing that really i think the thanks go to uh kaya and the green team and the high school leadership um and uh i know miss guinea the science department is uh front and center on that effort right thank you to the green team for your kind note
023yes thank you for coming to to tell us about your uh your project yeah that was that was a great presentation um and then on the regional side we just had we had a question about um curriculum content and that was directed to to to kristin and the administration and um taking care of those conversations yeah okay and so your superintendent's report great thank you so here we are on the eve of the last day of school somehow 2021 is finally coming to a close um we definitely want to celebrate all that has happened this year it's been such a collective effort across every aspect of the schools and the community and the parent educator partnerships and most of all these amazing kids who send us every day what they brought and rose to and
024made work and made the best of so tomorrow's the last day half day high school's been on exam schedules so their schedule already has been altered on middle elementary will release half day tomorrow the staff is with us until thursday so we're looking forward to wrapping up with them and getting a chance to catch our breath and wish them well for all their extraordinary efforts i think it's worth noting because we talked a lot about covet and then we just stopped because we could we have not had a copic case in the schools in any way related to the school since may 19th so that's just such a reassuring data point and i think really validating in the efforts we're making to expect normal see in the fall in terms of what our routines will
025be the state continues to say to us that we will all be back in person remote learning will not be an option the only caveat still out there is whether the youngest kids who are not yet vaccinated will be wearing masks more to come from them i'm sure but that is the message they are very very strongly sending as this school closes we have a meeting again tomorrow with the commissioner where i expect he will reiterate that um the other big piece of information is the lack of distancing they're going to be asking of us which really does allow us normalcy because we don't have to reconfigure things so that's all exciting end of year events and activities obviously graduations have been happening we've really successfully graduated the cchs class of 2021 same day the
026eighth grade class was celebrated we double dipped there for covered reasons primarily and making that logistically doable those activities have just continued i was able to join from my desk finally some children and not just adults no no no disrespect but uh to be with kids from my desk was great uh a grade eight had their award actually the whole middle school with a special celebration of grade 8 had their award ceremony this morning in a really creative hybrid mode with the kids and and their parents in person and zoom in the classroom so that the kids in the classrooms could yell and celebrate the kids that were getting the awards and all of us could join in from a distance it was just very well done um grade five is celebrating a lot this
027week as well he's able to join into the willard and alcott ceremonies that were held remotely this morning and tomorrow there's a card parade for thoreau so it's just been a really exciting time and i think even more so because we're doing things that we would normally be doing in maybe modified format um really my uh only last updates are about summer programming we have 21 students later for summer um programming at the high school that is primarily special education related primarily in our most intensive programs k-8 will be housed at willard for summer school july 6 through 3 weeks we have a mix of special education services there as well as general education and we're excited to have that all in one one roof it's worth noting i think other summer activities that will
028be going on in the schools case collaborative we are hosting at thoreau we have not been able to host a case classroom since we reconfigured the middle schools which as a member district is a bit of a struggle when you're not able to provide the space that really is part of the intent of membership um so we are very excited we're supposed to do it a year ago very excited to have them at thoreau for the summer um coming offline almost immediately will be alcott so that we can begin the work on our energy updates and replacements which is also a summer delay from what we had initially thought and ripley will be getting some upgrades this summer as well in terms of energy and that's a combined town sponsored green communities grant that will
029subsidize what we're going to match so that those updates are happening more quickly than we had initially expected so we will be busy this summer in a very different way than last summer so we're glad about that for sure and glad to give everyone the break we all need the break kids families staff everyone needs the break um so we're excited to to see that in light and really get to step back and i think as we reflect i think we're going to be pretty impressed with what we pulled off and that it went as well as it did um certainly not perfectly but overall incredibly well and served our most of all served the kids really well so those are my updates tonight thank you thank you are there any questions about how many
030students in the summer school can i'm sorry i didn't say that i meant to um we have 94 special education students and 66 generally and ell combined that number it's fairly typical we generally run about 200 kids in the summers give or take so we're not it doesn't seem like no we're not extraordinary larger due to covet we did invite perhaps many more kids because of covet but families are also taking some space yeah i think yes and we're glad for that too yeah absolutely so okay there are no other questions comments no then i'd like to welcome heather bowt back a long time one more hurrah can i come and show you so thank you thank you so much to heather you want to just come over here because then then can you see
031you on camera way over there actually and that's easier because alexa yeah sure [Music] make things happen i turn that one on so oh thank you i'll move that one here then thank you just so looks like somebody took over i think they are admirably i'm trying to fill your shoes yes because i'm almost wondering if i should order pizza for the executive session so welcome heather well thank you and thank you so much to alexa and heather for shepherding us through the evaluation process for synthesizing everything for um really pacing it out at a nice rate i think it was good so good to you know it was so well organized um i think that dr hunter has seen the evaluations um we have the report in the discussion here i think that everybody's
032had i hope everyone feels that they've had an opportunity to to share what they need to share to get their their thoughts across but if you have any more thoughts comments questions or whatever please uh reach out to the chairs and dr hunter and heather just for our huge audience if you want to state my name and address don't i no no no if you could just like give it a little 101 on you know what we don't isn't just our idea of doing an evaluation of dr hunter this is the best requirement state requirement follow a rubric or try to and so back up and start high level yeah well since i'm a visitor now i should state that i'm heather about in 52 second road um and it's called memory until recently so
033alex and i did this together this year thanks for having us present it all um so why don't i kind of kick off with that high level and then we can we can get into the details for today um so as we all know the school community has three primary roles one of it which is hiring and support hiring managing the superintendent so one of our primary objectives one of our goals every year is to run the superintendent evaluation process um it is highly regulated by desi we have a form that every school committee in the state fills out to run the evaluation we've all been really working on this all year because it starts in the fall well usually in the spring with the beginning of our year but it starts in the summer
034or fall when we set the goals for the year um we then do a formative evaluation and discussion of where we are on those goals mid-year and by the end we fill out the final summative evaluation um then that gets sent back to desi the department of elementary school secondary education um and we presented here so what we've done for this year based on those goals in the process we all agreed on our process um step by step and schedule in the fall uh we did the formative in january and then come spring we each had and this is for everybody out there we each had our individual meetings with dr hunter we each filled out the evaluation form for ourselves so there are seven individual evaluations and then what alexa and i have done
035over the past 10 days is take all of those and average them into one summative evaluation so that becomes dr hunter's evaluation um the way we did it was really is actually very objective there's no subjectivity in this at all um the ratings themselves are actually numerical averages of what we all put in anybody's interested they can see alexa's amazing spreadsheet and all of the comments we actually just took quotes from everybody so you will see your own words they not will not be in quotes because alexa and i did not ourselves write anything in the summative comments other than what we had in our individuals so we went through everybody's seven and took pieces of everybody's comments put them together tried to make it sound like a coherent paragraph and that is what led
036to the summative form that we have now um so we can go through it do you want me to kind of do the short pile of the pieces that i summarized on there well you know yes but this was a joint effort definitely well on behalf of everybody but then the summary on behalf of both of us um so why don't i go through i don't know are you going to put it up or should i just or are we putting it up or not or should i just talk through it i'll just talk through it um i think the link is on the agenda people can look at it okay um so let me start with dr hunter congratulations you're an exemplary leader um and this committee has been very impressed with not only
037your whole tenure but this past year and your ability to react to an incredible global pandemic and lead us through with shining colors um so again the old overall um rating is exemplary sorry this keeps coming up with i i just have to clear out sorry it wasn't letting me connect okay we're gonna cancel that um so the overall rating is exemplary and we congratulate you and thank you um so where we end up uh we looked through all the goals as everybody knows there are two different sections to the evaluation one is based on the goals that we mentioned the other is actually four standards that are defined by deci so we first go through all of the goals which are grouped into three categories professional practice student learning and district improvement goals in
038all three of those high level categories according to the seven evaluations the superintendent met all goals and on the high level standards which are instructional leadership that's standard one standard two is management and operations standard three is family and community engagement and standard for professional culture the and as we've all discussed the uh goal the ratings from exemplary down to unsatisfactory of course uh have various scales proficient is considered really the standard for a good strong superintendent in the state and dr hunter was proficient in standards one three and four and in standard two management and operations she was exemplary uh again all based on the numerical averages of everybody's ratings um so i will go through the comments it is long i don't know that we want to read through the whole thing because
039that will take a long time but let me just hit on kind of the high points in the summary of each paragraph i will read the first paragraph because it they're the high level comments and again these are comments from all of us it starts off dr hunter is a tremendous leader of our district she is no doubt a leader in her field and is regarded highly by all stakeholders in the district her commitment to the goals values and mission of the district and above all the best interests of students guides her daily work dr hunter courageously leads by example and inspires her staff to strive for excellence she maintains high standards as well as the intrinsic integrity that defines her and that is so much of what we value and respect in dr hector
040um the next section pretty much by everybody was primarily about the incredible health crisis that we face this year and how dr hunter dealt with it um the the summative and the conclusive definitely unanimous opinion is that she is a strong decisive and smart leader who steered our schools effectively in the face of this health crisis so there is a myriad of positive comments on how you did that primarily focused on the collaboration and the engaging the numerous groups who stepped in to help us but who also needed your leadership to make all of this happen and bring it together um you were you did it in a way that was based on collaboration and you kept your focus on the high standards and the students which is always at the forefront of what you
041do and we see that um you address the year's difficulties with confidence compassion and integrity and maintain an optimism that i even i respect after having been told i'm the same way um and we commend you on that um outside of the pandemic there are also many comments based on your other strengths innovative vision exceptional management and communication skills the organizational and planning skills to execute on vision collaboration and inclusive approach bringing people together communication and leadership on a daily basis being an active listener and knowing when you need more information and acting on that overall there are also so many other things that you accomplished this year and to to highlight them in list form outside of the pandemic dr hunter accomplished so much such as her she and her team very capably supported
042the school committee and bargaining with seven units throughout the two districts which is an incredible amount of bargaining this year's budget process was very efficient especially in light of the pandemic her leadership and direction regarding rti practices and screenings lays the groundwork for a consistent approach throughout both districts once the cms building project restarted in december she helped the committee to complete the feasibility study move into schematic design she has moved the districts forward in relation to diversity equity inclusion and continued to manage improvements in special education so that's a lot of quantifiable success there in looking ahead there were many comments about things that we can also do more and further some members expressed a desire for instructional leadership and innovative practices to be further showcased in the coming year um would love to
043see a lot of that innovative work and other we have hopefully some covered efforts behind us with regards to um let me see in special education um would love to see more on the social emotional and special learning needs uh on the middle school project uh there there were some comments about looking for an even more defined process going forward um about the process checkpoints and basically making sure that the community is totally uh that it's very transparent to the community to generate that trust and confidence that we'll need to be needed at town meeting you know that's a focus um and with dei there has so much that's been happening and some members mentioned wanting to see even more further development of goals and structure related to the equity inclusion so that's all stuff
044that we know you're focused on the summative conclusion that i'll read again from here of the school committee is that dr hunter is exemplary in her role they have committed to an extended tenure for dr hunter based on their confidence and expectations in her leadership and look forward to even further progress in the future dr hunter is a leader among leaders she has established herself as a true leader not only of our schools but of our entire community we are unspeakably fortunate to have her okay thank you and i will pass it over to alexa to go through comments on each of the standards sure so as heather mentioned there are four standards um standard one which is instructional leadership had an overall rating there was that was where we were fully in consensus with
045each other um uh in a proficient rating uh for that standard uh the the sort of core piece um that i think came out of this standard was that in evaluating this particular standard it was important that we do it with the lens focused on covid and how we managed instructional leadership despite the obstacles of the pandemic so it also in that standard it did give as heather said us ability to think forwardly and i think there did emerge some common themes on um what we as a committee might like to focus on and as heather mentioned i think specifically uh the programs that we are putting together and buttressing in our special ed environment are something that as we hopefully put covid in the rear view mirror we can begin to put a narrower
046focus on for the committee with respect to management and operations where dr hunter earned an exemplary overall rating to me this was the standard where um there was a great deal of praise um the combination of um her leadership team specifically with jared and and how we're managing the fiscal operations and how the how we interface with other town important town committees was a particularly high praise and the and making the process very accessible not only to people on the school committee but to the public as well i think that um in years past the budgeting project process has been less transparent and more confusing and i think that this district and the overall community has really demanded a cultural change and it seems that this team or not it seems this team has risen
047to the occasion and that is very much apparent in this standard our next standard is family community engagement where the the superintendent earned a proficient reading communication seems to be yet another strong suit of this leadership team specifically dr hunter and specifically how we engage the community during the truly upending very nerve-wracking time i think was particularly outstanding not only did community of committee members reference how we as a committee felt that there was a lot of discussion in the documents about how the larger community perceived the communications from the district to specifically parents and then again to how we um dr hunter's leadership team interfaced with all the different various community groups that were necessary to i think it was it was a nice metaphor i don't remember who wrote it but create like
048an a very strong web that really buttressed our schools through the pandemic and it was those partnerships that really were were instrumental in getting us through this unscathed um with respect to professional culture i think um jesus i'm so blind um he's so sad um so there were sort of two themes that uh that kind of emerged there one um was respect to professional culture and i think um the way that it seems that this leadership team and all the teams collaborate together to create a sense of community is really important i think again as we emerge from the pandemic despite the fact that kovid really was sort of the overarching theme of the year we did also as a school committee and as a district really prioritize our diversity equity and inclusion work and
049that like special ed i think is going to be a theme that the school committee and the district in general truly wants to focus on and continue to work collaboratively to ensure that the rollout with our new director is you know fully transparent and continuing to evolve and and grow and progress so and again that sorry if i didn't say that rating on professional culture was proficient as well so um everyone's comments were great i enjoyed reading them i enjoyed synthesizing them and um yeah thank you so i'll just um just comment on the process also thank you all for the time that goes into it this is a time-consuming process to put all those thoughts together and it is one of the most important things we do so it's very valuable thank you all
050for doing that um i found it very fulfilling and satisfying and it's it's great to see all of that feedback come together and when you first read it very hard to figure out how am i going to summarize all this but once you pull it together it feels like okay this feels like a good summary of it all um we should mention too there was also one comment on the process itself so this is not a feedback of dr hunter but on the comment there was a comment um that maybe we should there should be some thought next year to the region versus concord and whether there should be any delineation or separate feedback somehow so i will leave that deal with you to discuss for next year but i'm just making sure that i
051note it yeah in this past year there were a few focus indicators that seemed to focus more for example on the concord district than the region and it might prove beneficial for everybody to when those focus indicators emerge in the ensuing years that we do differentiate them just so that um you know there's there's further clarification as to everybody's roles yeah great and i think that's i think that's probably lies thank you thank you for letting up the groundwork we have a lot of we have your information packet from the beginning of the year with our timeline and we just need to put the dates in too uh going forward yeah so that's great thank you good i'm lacking you're welcome thank you for coming thank you brother i'm very satisfied with the process don't
052want to talk about the process or the content i think they did a wonderful job so thank you alexa yes um but i do want to say dr hunter something that didn't fit into the rubric was any reference to the sheer time you put in no superintendent comes our way without their family loaning them to us but i think your family did more than that this past year i had to take care not to communicate with you at any crazy hours because you would reply um you all know that yes so so in addition to everything else that's been said i think we should acknowledge that uh uh we are in debt to your family as well so thank you i will pass that along that is a very good point i know i just
053i can't i have to say this is not a job i do in isolation and the team that is supporting me and all of us um and the kids especially just so wrote i might have set some stones in place this year but everything that happened was the fluid paths that they built once we set those stones i will say the one other note of this year especially i'm a process person i like to strategically lay it out and make the plan and then gave my way through that and boy was i out of my comfort zone almost isn't smart pretty much every day since march of 2020 and just making decisions that you really didn't know how they were going to turn out is interesting to look back on and sort of see how
054we got to those decisions and had some sense that they were going to turn out okay and then why were they so successful because that is absolutely not all me and that that absolutely pervades the entire school system and the families and the teachers and the support staff and everyone we were the bus drivers last week and we can't i mean they literally are the way we were able to bring all the kids back in april because they were willing to come work during the middle of the day so it just was such a united effort and i'm watching other districts as they sum up their years either in this process or otherwise you're not really looking at you know harm they've got to undo and i feel so fortunate that i i think we
055actually might have some places were better and i that's not on me so thank you i'm really appreciative of course and well i have all your individual documents and we'll spend time with them for sure great thank you all right thank you heather the last thing i'll give you you can choose to replace your current one with it or not but as i showed you on zoom you now have a new nameplate that according to the student in kindergarten the year you arrived you are dr laurie hunter superhero of schools [Laughter] or no i could wait around or not i should have touched base on that later give it some thought i'll be here this goes thank you if you if you can stay then i think that's great okay i mean it's i think
056it's worthwhile yeah okay okay um yes so so on to the issue of calendars um with our our calendar update i just want to note right now that uh we will not be able to formally seat the region the new the new region chair vice chair until carlisle has its elections on the 22nd of june and so our meeting after that is when we will see that new committee properly yep um and we have sent out a doodle poll for the just to to work on that sticky july date um if you have not yet done so please do fill it out though i um so so i think we're i think we're narrowing down um getting to a date there so we should have that calendar worked out um and i think that's all
057we have for updates on the calendar issue right which brings us then to jared with the uh end of year close updates so i updated the memo from may 21st uh with only a few things uh so right now our numbers are holding i do anticipate the surplus number that i provided you the couple of differences as you know you load the assessments next year by 300 000 therefore we need to increase our reserve to reduce we also reduced the we i took off the design services for the amenities building that is something that you asked me um to remove i also have sort of a little update as well um that we have been looking into if approved and get this is just a recommendation this is all your decisions one of the things
058we're looking into if you do approve the electric school bus um a vehicle to grid converter converter so you can we can sell power back to cmlp that would be about an additional 50 000 what we're thinking right now i don't know if i'll have that but it's just something that we are looking into so i'll sort of stuff from the beginning just because you knew i hadn't seen this before so uh we saw our clothes out every single year around uh around may um this year was a year like no other we received we received a number of additional funds federal funds from the cares act we received 297 000 that has been spent that is spent we received 26 000 in the initial desi emergency relief we anticipate to roll that over into
059future years we received an another 85 886 dollars in deci emergency relief 2. that is also something that we can anticipate to move to other fiscal years and we just received another 192 889 so what that allowed us to do especially using that original kiersack money it allowed us to transfer some monies that we had originally appropriated in the fy21 budget to these for ppe for student supervisors etc what this also did is this year due to a number of things created more of a surplus i think that we put together a very good budget you know the principals the department chairs all followed it they used up their supplies from fy 20 into effort so they didn't need as much supplies that is i'm seeing right now in the available balances again the special
060tuitions came in under what we what we thought we did prepay tuitions last year we didn't pre-pay cps but we did prepay the high school so that also helped with the surplus utility costs are down so overall that also all that contributed to the surplus there's three main revolving accounts that we that sort of impact the general fund balance one of them the first one being the athletic revolving account we do feel that we're going to be able to carry at least a 300 000 budget going forward which is is high we did have a savings due to the fall sports and transportation as well as some supplies so we do feel that this balance is going to carry over into next year this can help pay for capital projects such as if communities of
061chooses can help offset some of the turf expenses that we anticipate in the next four to five years the food service revolving account our food service abroad con as you all know is self-funding we didn't anticipate uh in a loss in fy 20 as well as fy21 but we did carry over a six-month balance so we we think and this is also included in the numbers that we can get that six month balance back by charging about a hundred thousand dollars worth of food service expenses to the general fund if um if if we're if the numbers stay the way that we think that they they are so that would give us you know about a six month worth of expenses which is on the high end and we do expect next year to start
062at least having profit of the dollar that's always the goal have a profit of the dollar the last one is the circuit breaker so we received 872 560 in fy21 by law we're allowed to carry over that amount into fy 22. that is the goal we anticipate being able to carry that amount over um so that's good news that's a contingency that we've had for the past few years so what we have recommended um to uh what we're recommending to cover some of the 1.3 surplus would be one would be the 450 000 uh special intuitions that we're estimating right now the 368 502 and the freshman macbooks and then 350 000 in the electric bus but it's important to point out that 70 of that would be eligible for reimbursement over the next five
063years and then lastly the surplus remaining surplus would be about 200 000 and we recommended that to be put into the capital stabilization account so it's a lot of information i'm happy to answer questions again all just recommendations this is all your decision and i i will end with this there's a there's also a good chance that we will have additional monies um that may um that we just cannot spend and what will happen is that we'll automatically go back to the towns once they estimate our end which would be around january or february of next year and that would offset the third or fourth quarter assessments i'll know i'll know around august 15 where i'll give you a preliminary number at that july meeting of where i think we're ending and then probably the
064last meeting in august i'll have a pretty good idea of where everything is can you just clarify that this is after we made our end commitments yes so right now we are at 4.99 uh so any dollar that up to i think it's like 20 000 to get us to that five percent um essentially any dollar left over uh would go back to the towns because we have hit that uh at 4.99 as long as we end the general fund with at least seven hundred thousand dollars um six hundred thousand dollars to um meet the reserve to reduce amount and a hundred thousand to offset the uh interest um deficit that we experienced this year so mr stan if i if i may if i understand it correctly question you're proposing uh the school committee
065consider one motion tonight to increase the general fund operating budget and it references the stabilization fund implicit in that is the material in the other menu memo of june 11. correct so one motion encompasses all of that come back to the food service self-funded we hope in a normal year when we didn't have the swings that you've had to deal with this year what would be a normal front load three months where we enjoy six months this year and i i will say i've said this before i inherited a very very healthy food service program that our current director only made it blossom even more even though we have experienced a loss many districts especially this year are covering this through the general fund and some districts are covering it through their free cash um
066because you can't run a revolving account in a deficit if if we ended in a deficit in the food service that would have to come from the general fund it would have to be covered in the town by free cash in a regional by the eu so three months is three to four months is is recommended but not many districts get there you speak a little bit about the uh the athletics account yes what's the normal and yeah so i think my first year we had about 60 to 70 000 um and we made the decision last year to put more money into the athletic revolving because we just didn't know what would happen in in this fiscal year um while you're not supposed to have a hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in
067the athletic revolving if uh for for instances like this our auditors we've already checked in with them they are they are okay with this high balance they're also okay that potentially we could have some future capital expenses that if the committee so chooses that could be paid out of this next year when we go back to a normal year this is i do not we will not have this high balance going forward also during budget time we'll have some decisions to make if we want to use some of the athletic revolving account to offset some of the general fund expenses because we do pay all of our coaching salaries out of the general fund so we not only have expenses in the in the athletic revolving we also have it in the in the general
068fund and that's a lot that's that's easy enough to correct yeah you don't want to create a cliff it might be a one year thing but if this committee still chooses then they can have that discussion you don't expect the revolving fund the athlete to grow any more than it is right now uh i do not uh after this year because we did raise fees a couple years ago and i i think we might if this does grow anywhere i think we need to go back and look at that because it's a little unbalanced as some of the teams don't really spend that much money honestly and they may have a very high subscription and then might not necessarily benefit from a targeted uh expenditure so i think we have to be careful yeah it's
069a very odd year no i know in the 90s but we didn't transport kids the way we normally do we don't know within the same few communities that we're really local and we only drove them minimally versus right just for the public i always say our expectation is that so we need to watch it through the fall and be sure that we don't end up with a surplus after that a real fall season yeah school bus that's that's doable by june 30. it is we so because we've already done uh bids for the um the vw i don't have any updates i'm sorry the vw bus we do have a bid ready to go so if so we will be able to do that if you decide to i was just going to ask if
070you had any feedback from last night from the call of income oh carlos fincom i i think they appreciated this dive and i think they i think that should we ever find ourselves in this situation again that we should engage with uh with the fend moms of both towns earlier just to explain what it is or our thinking um the main point was to to communicate to them that we have been thinking seriously about how to use this money um and about how the how to protect the interests of the taxpayers of the districts um and how best to utilize this money so that if there are for example you know the electric school bus you can make a lot of arguments for yes it's a lot right now but it it makes a lot
071of benefits just from from our environmental goals um as well as from a fiscal responsibility perspective and so while it's something that maybe wouldn't have necessarily been achievable um in normal you know without this surplus there are a lot of reasons to proceed with it it's not just oh we can buy an electric school bus right i mean right now you do have you get the the reimbursement you get the and and it of course holds up our goal of sustainability so um so it was mostly to communicate to fincom those kinds of conversations that we're having and the same thing we talked a lot about the stabilization fund um and how there's little appetite for just putting money into a stabilization fund for the sake of putting it there but there's a little there's
072more interest in if we know that there are real capital expenses coming in the near term that it's probably a more efficient way to put the money there or could be considered a more efficient way to put the money there than to return to the towns later on for um long-term caps requests or or or separate warrant article um so that was that was most of the conversation i think you captured my impressions well they just really were hoping to engage which i think i think they were glad to hear we were still in the decision-making process and that things hadn't happened without them at all being involved and i'm glad we went and we will need to continue to communicate with them right now we've had a few discussions about the feed back to
073municipal light do we have any of those uh generating capacities now i i can't remember i i don't think so i mean i think the only one you referred to would be our first the one would i refer to and what it would do is it would allow up to three buses um to generate that uh in that energy uh so the one will do that and implicit in what you're saying is uh that you could have the authority to make that purchase if the closeout finances enabled it am i correct yeah and that cost is about what we're thinking fifty thousand and and this all came about i'm sorry um he's apologized because i'm hearing it for the first time apparently it happened recently today well you if i'm correct you have the authority
074to authorize those expenditures but we can still register an opinion um yeah if the funds are available we would certainly want you i'm certainly in favor of it if you uh do the due diligence with the light plant which i'm sure you will and it's a nice compliment you remember we got money a year ago at town meeting for infrastructure work that's what i was going to say so this is your wager it is underway so that we have um more charging stations and greater capacity over there i think there was a free cash contract and it was even a citizen petition yes yes yeah good okay we're moving along yes we are okay okay okay further discussions conversations questions no thank you jared for yeah all of the updates you know the ever-evolving suggestions
075and recommendations and uh and really first you know for getting us through this year and so with that i think we are on to action items wow all right um so first action item is a vote to approve assistant superintendent of finance and operations contract so to make a motion at the concord and conquer school committee's vote to approve the assistant superintendent of finance and operations contract i'll just clarify it's a three-year contract jared's commitment i'm trying to decide if it's you committing to him or we're just trying to be sure he doesn't go anywhere 21 to 24. okay there's a second second okay discussion roll call vote anderson i booth eye for both this is both yeah sorry tonight for both there's dead eiffel booth is that i think eva are you here i'll
076go radii for both and wilson for region okay motion passes uh the next item uh vote to approve the concrete carl regional school district custodial unit three-year successor agreement and i have a motion i'll make a motion of the concord carla regional school committee vote to approve the ccrsd custodial unit 3 year successor agreement for the period of 22-24 is there a second second i just want to thank their team and our team as well it was a very good negotiation very professional they came in uh very respectful uh wishes and we were able to get something done i think two or three meetings so they were ready to go thanks uh to steve wahl and his team for all their hard work this year we really appreciate it and i know their here isn't
077quite over so keep up the good work yes thank you so much to the to the team to um and to the custodian back to the study unit thank you okay ready ready andrews and i for both reason only this one thank you i vote to approve the maintenance to your successor agreement sure um i will make the motion that the concord public school committee vote to approve the maintenance unit two-year successor agreement for the period of 20 000 or to 2023 and a second notion that the concord carlisle regional school committee vote to approve the maintenance unit two-year successor agreement for the period of 2022-2023 i don't have my robert's rules with me yeah we need to have two motions on the table at once i think you have to do one at a
078time yeah okay yeah so we'll just i'll just drop the second motion all right second the first motion thank you with uh thanks to our maintenance staff it's a small number of people who toil around all the buildings much of their work is unseen until we enjoy the benefits of it so thank you to them for everything they did to get us through this year a second dad mr griffin thank you to you and your team um and uh again um on some heroes they just do the work i don't expect any praise and they a lot of them been here for many many years um i will make a second motion that the concord carlisle regional school committee vote to approve the maintenance unit two-year successor agreement for the period of 2022-2023 sure so
079anderson asks discussion chair do you have any here thank you anything more to say about the region regional agreement they do the same thing thank you guys i felt spoiled in that negotiation it was a breeze they were great i will send i okay okay thank you um we have a vote to prepay conquer carlisle regional school district special education tuitions they're a motion i mean school committee authorized the prepayment of fiscal 2022 tuitions in accordance with mgl chapter 71 section 71d and mgl chapter 40 section 4e i'll second that discussion i think we know where we are yeah just similar to earlier yeah does that allow us to do that yeah yeah did you hear that uh for cps so basically they identify 450 000 we can prepay uh three months worth a hundred
080percent of collaboratives uh and in the years uh in the years past we have uh prepaid the high school tuitions um and um we're sort of just formalizing it this year while it's not required to vote it is required to have a conversation about it and sort of authorize me to prepay um great okay roll call anderson wilson i thank you okay and um now we have the vote to increase the budget using e and d in order to transfer to stabilization account okay this one uh reads uh the i move that the copyright control regional school committee vote to increase the fiscal 21 general fund operating budget 35 million 922 this is an increase of 200 000 which will fund the stabilization line the revenue for this increase will come from the excess and
081deficiency account resulting in no change to the member municipalities assessments second second discussion so i sent the memo to you all on june 10th sort of outlining how this process works i can go over it or i can answer specific questions so ultimately just a high level version that as you know back in 1991 town meeting approved a stabilization fund there are two ways to fund this stabilization account as outlined in the memo one would be sort of a line item approved in the budget process and the other one would be from end transferred into the stabilization account currently as currently we have 1.6 million dollars in the in end so ultimately i will end the general fund balance with an additional 200 000 that will go back and plug into that 200 000 that
082you're moving from e to d so it would be it will go back to that 4.99 our treasurer will send a letter to both both towns saying that we are going to increase our budget using e d to fund the stabilization account they will have 45 days to reply since we're not asking any money for any money they can do it as soon as they wish once we receive both authorizations back from the towns then it's just sort of a journal entry with our auditors and all of that so any questions thank you thank you um is there more discussion everybody's comfortable we've had this conversation a bit one last thing just so you all know once this money is in the accounts of this company 8 000 the school committee does have authorization um
083over this money it would not go back to town town meeting to spend it and and we have noted that uh notwithstanding that we would want to make quite a public process all right okay um i just the 45-day i mean that just um so it doesn't matter that if you go into next fiscal year it's just a journal entry as long as we get the vote before june 30. okay fantastic great okay roll call anderson i miranda [Music] i miss my opportunity at the concord school committee meeting but i just want to thank as we are on the eve of the last day of school i want to thank everybody all of our teachers our students our families our building service workers our food service workers and everybody who wasn't for getting our bus
084drivers for their incredible work patience um just yeah i can't say enough and i'm sure everybody in this room feels the same way so thank you to everyone in this room yeah thank you for saying that yeah absolutely certainly okay so i it's hard to follow i'd rather end right there the concrete school committee and the conker call congregational school committee will enter into executive session under purpose three of the open meeting law to discuss strategy with respect for collective bargaining with collective bargaining units concord teachers association and concrete call out teachers association and return to open session and i so move second second we'll call anderson booth see you all in a bit our remote school committee members are getting a link now so you can join us an exec session differently thank you
085we are coming back welcome back okay we are here for our last action item uh which is the vote to approve the ccta contract 2021 to 2024. i have a motion in front of me we're all just regrouping and i got kicked off the internet so i can't have anybody having it school committee votes to approve the three-year contract 2021-2024 for the concord carla teachers association for a second second all right discussion i i i want to say that i greatly appreciate the dialogue that we had with the teachers association and i think it was a very productive series of sessions it was productive and i think we may have exhausted this word but i think it was collaborative um and i think it was it was indicative of really of how everyone in this
086district and how we got through this year right because of the collaboration between everybody and we've seen it through the bargaining units that really represent almost everybody um in the district right and districts and uh and and this so i appreciated the conversations students remained at the forefront of those conversations and that was very heartening for all the parties all right time for a vote anderson abstain because i have a very fabulous sister-in-law who teaches at cchf thank you have staying through the whole process yes yes guys rainy eye who will sinai russian carries oh very good so can i have a motion to adjourn any closing comments for our last uh school committee meeting 21. i think we have uh expressed our appreciation to many people i think our new chairs and irani expressed
087that those thanks could not be overstated and try as we might we can't overstate them we are deeply in debt to everybody who made this year possible thank you have a safe summer yes thank you is there a motion to adjourn so moved second and wilson for region thank you all good night